The governor’s task force on opiate addiction recommends spending $10 million statewide to help addicts get off drugs and into a life that doesn’t involve nodding out on street corners.

Unlike the more genteel suburbs, where drug dealers bring the dope to your door and you shoot up on the couch, in Fall River, people are going behind a building, hitting a vein and then stumbling out on the street, sniffing and scratching.

And all I could think of when I read that story was how a pathetic little, dirt-caked junkie, a guy who can’t hold his head up, holds up a multimillion dollar treatment industry, a billion dollar law enforcement industry, a huge raft of salaries and benefits and pensions and promotions and “campaigns to raise public awareness.”

The cops get paid, the lawyers get paid, the judges get paid, the fines get paid, the emergency rooms get paid, the “addiction counsellors” get paid, even bricklayers get paid for building the “treatment facilities.”

You gotta love the junkie who, by virtue of his sad addiction, maintains (and expands) an industry that is nearly lay-off proof. Around here, only one of the needle trades is gone. The other one is hiring for the second shift.

The poor junkie’s life only goes one way, unless he quits, but the money his addiction pours into the illicit economy and pries out of the state does so much good for so many who’ve never had a needle in their arms.

Drugs are the worst thing that ever happened to city life because city life requires people to live in close quarters and to park on the street. In Fall River, the front door opens on the sidewalk and when the windows are open, you can hear your neighbors talking in their kitchen.

That kind of life becomes less and less possible every year as a larger and larger percentage of the population becomes addicted, dirty, irresponsible , unemployable and desperate for money.

And legalization won’t fix that. A guy shooting eight bags of heroin a day doesn’t become a responsible citizen just because the stuff is legal. He’s still too high to work, he still isn’t likely to care about his kids or his personal hygiene and he’s still gonna be a lousy neighbor and tenant.

In the last few years, “job creators” is the economic voodoo phrase used to describe people who own businesses, who hire you and me.